Failed Anti-Depressant Hailed as Female Viagra

by jordan | May 23, 2007 at 10:23 am | 1913 views | 1 comment

Post-It notes were supposed to ba super-adhesive. LSD was meant as a truth serum. Now we have Flibanserin, which researchers hoped would be an anti-depressant. Instead, this drug seems to asct as a sex-drive stimulant in female test subjects, raising the media-friendly flag of "female Viagra (or Cialis, etc. for balance's sake)". This drug is not yet FDA-approved, as it has yet to enter full-scale human trials, and is therefore not yet for sale.

It was originally investigated as an anti-depressant.

"But it didn't work well," says UT Southwestern gynecologist Bruce Carr. "Now the company that was investigating it was going to shelve it but they found when they looked at the data that the women that had taken it, one of the side-effects is increased sex drive, or increased libido."

Dr. Carr is among the investigators of Flibanserin - a daily medication to improve a woman's sex drive.

Last year, the FDA refused to approve Intrinsa, a testosterone patch for women.

Instead of increasing hormone levels, Flibanserin targets the pleasure zones of a woman's brain.

Should Flibanserin get approved, will they give it a "sexier" name? And, more to the point, will my inbox be flooded with "Fl1ban5erin" spam?

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ricknight

at 09:28 on May 23rd, 2007

good stuff:

jordan,

What a drag it is, getting old

"It's so different today", I hear every mother say
They just need something today, for confidence
And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper
And the kids are all away, it's a blue and busy day

-> Good stuff.